Yup. I should have never talked about filing the skirt down. Battery center post or carto center pin lifting are better ways to deal with it. I'm 100% recommending the carto center pin adjustment now though. If someone gets over-zealous lifting the battery post, it could be damaged. If someone gets over-zealous lifting the carto center, it can be damaged but doesn't cost nearly so much to replace. - And filing the skirt down might or might not work, plus leaves metal shavings, and can be problematic like you experienced.
Sorry about that.
Nothing to be sorry about

(geez, where'd the time go - tons more pages in this thread since my last post!)
Anyway, I tried lifting the pin on the carto, but it wouldn't budge and I didn't want to get over-zealous and pop it out - so I'm back to filing-down the skirts. I'm handy and this is fine by me. This way, I'm figuring there's no way to accidentally kill the carto or my battery - besides, these are technically disposable anyway
Only real issue is the metal shavings - stuffing some tissue in the end before hand keeps the shavings out of the connector. Draw seems the same whether I file it down to where the air-notches are completely gone or file in new notches. My most recent is completely flat. (YMMV)
Still using my Clearos occasionally, and I've noticed the EMDC's hit seems a bit dryer. Also noticed that I need to hit my 2.6ohm clearos with at least 5v to get the same TH... but the cloud with the clearos at that voltage seems more dense and seems to condense in the mouthpiece more than the EMDC's at "ego-clone-voltage."
Custom button guard??? Picts or description, please?
Sorry, I missed your post in the sea of replies in this thread

I thought about making a
"ego-clone ghetto-button-protector thread" but didn't think there'd be much interest... anyway, it's just a small section of empty register-roll (plastic tube) with a button-size hole in it. Fits snugly around the button and makes the button flush w/o having to mod the batt at all. I pretty'd it up a bit with a dremmel lol
EDIT: the part about the EMDCC messing with the guard was solved with better de-burring of the filed end
